Futher to my previous post... it struck me that a lot of people's problems would suddenly become much clearer if they could upload a screenshot. However, taking and uploading screenshots is currently a reasonably complex process, especially on XP (where it involves Microsoft Paint). Here's today's usability challenge: can we enhance Firefox in some way to make this easier? For example, it would be great if we could give users instructions like: Right click on the "Browse" button of this file upload control and select "Upload Screenshot" See the timer start to count down from 10 in the top right of your screen Bring the relevant window or tab you want to take a screenshot of to the front Wait for the timer to expire Hit "submit" on the form...

I want to make those of you, who are actively translating Lightning aware, that we are now ready to freeze our strings for the approaching 1.0b2 release.

After the string freeze we are currently planning for two and a half additional weeks before we try to release our first release candidate on May 25th. We would really appreciate it if you could have your locales in shape for the first RC, as I do hope we will only need one release candidate. Please also note that we have to stay in sync with the Thunderbird schedule, so we might have to prepone our rc1 release to an earlier date.

That gives you 2-3 weeks to get your localizations in shape.

The 1.0b2 release will come from the comm-1.9.2 release branch, which means you should commit your work to the l10n-mozilla-1.9.2 repositories. If any of you will not be able to keep his or her locale updated for the 1.0b2 release, please let me know beforehand.

I am aware that we still don't have bug 346278 fixed, I am really sorry this is still the case. If rc1 is released and you notice any localization problems, please do let me know as quickly as possible so I can coordinate a second release candidate. I do hope to fix this bug in the next two weeks though!

Please let Simon Paquet or me know if any of you wants to join us for 1.0b2.

So far I've been able to mostly keep up with the changes and "fix" my settings so this doesn't impact me too much. But I'm not your typical user and I'll bet many older users and most new users don't manage privacy controls as well.

I like a lot of the new capabilities that Facebook is building. I'm still a Facebook user. I know and respect a decent number of people working there.

My concern is this: Facebook isn't simply following the lead of an audience that's decreasingly concerned about privacy, (as I suspect they tell themselves.) What they're doing is actually leading an audience to be less concerned about privacy. There's a pretty big difference there and it's that difference that makes me increasingly uncomfortable with Facebook's direction.

So, if I was sitting down with the top brass at Facebook, what would I say? I think I'd ask them, "Do you think these default settings are ideal for your children and/or your parents?"

I also wonder if you polled a representative sample of Facebook users and asked them to describe what of their Facebook experience was available to their friends, networks, all Facebook users, or the whole internet, how close to the truth would they get?

Privacy is hard. It's hard to get right for everyone involved. But there are some basic pieces of privacy that are not so hard and I think that Facebook could do a lot better by asking themselves and their users these simple questions I've offered above.

I'm in the market for a whiteboard (somewhere between 2x3 and 4x6 in size; still deciding on exact size). Ideally one that actually erases well. Anyone have any brand recommendations or dis-recommendations?

Last updated Mon May 10 18:22:13 2010

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